I don't have any right to judge you and I'm not. I'm just saying that it sheds light on your other opinions. You think that stealing is justified even when it's not necessary at all. I was rather shocked that someone would brag about that in public but, again, I'm not judging.

What great virtue is there in not judging? Fine, then, don't judge Troberg, but at least judge the action. The action is not only illegal but immoral. And what if, by "tinkering," you break the thing? Then your coffee scam costs someone not only the coffee you stole, but the revenue from all the other coffees that could have been sold, and the maintenance and/or replacement of the machine.

Society cannot run on such extreme selfishness. I judge acts motivated by such callousness wrong whether it is Troberg or Congress, and I don't see the grand virtue in not judging it so.

Not saying it's wrong to judge just that I'm not. I have no idea what he really does and, frankly, I have a hard time believing much of what he says he does is true. If I had some reason to believe it was true then, yeah, I might report it to someone who could pass judgement.

Not only that, unless the coffee machine was designated specifically for said tinkering by the staff (or the owner of the machine), tinkering with it to get free merchandise is certainly not Troberg's call to make.

I don't care what university you go to, you only get to experiment with things they allow you to. Even if they encourage you to learn and experiment there are things that a school doesn't want you to tamper with.

Just be glad she wasn't in Criminology. They have to run numbers, hold up banks, and launder the proceeds to learn what motivates organized crime. It's apparently OK to keep some to give the guys in Law so they can bribe a judge for their ethics coursework.

Comment: Not sure if it works or not. Not comfortable testing it when it is not an emergency

(more content, final edit, please post this one instead)

Though I am no expert in vending machines I imagine what happens is:

1) Customer drops coins into slot which goes into a temporary holding bin

2) If the sale was successful/not cancelled, the coins are dropped from the
temporary holding bin into the main bin which is a secure lockbox where all the proceeeds from previous
sales are kept. (Someone must physicaly open the machine
and the lock box to get to it's contents), ELSE

3) If the sale is cancelled, the coins are dropped from the temporary bin to the coin return tray instead of the main bin.

This would be the easiest/most logical/inexpensive way of doing this so I can't imagine anything that would cause a vending machine to pay out like a slot
machine short of tearing the machine apart with an industrial shredder which is used to destroy discarded ATM machines.

Some machines do accept denominations other than quarters, so this could be done with the change bin (the third bin aloing with the main and holding) through software, but I doubt there would be any way to empty this through front panel only "cheat codes"; There would be a button inside the locked machine you have to press to do this.

(this all assumes the machine was designed by competent engineers, so if there is a machine out there with such a serious flaw, I'd like to hear about it.